Two top judges in Iran were shot dead on Saturday in what has been reported as a targeted assassination directed at the Islamic regime’s enablers in the country’s Supreme Court.
The two judges, Ali Razini and Mohammad Moghiseh were killed after an armed man entered the court, in Tehran, Iran’s capital on Saturday morning.
The attacker was said to have then killed himself while fleeing the scene, according to the judiciary’s news website, Mizan. A bodyguard was also injured in the attack.
The motive for the attack is unclear, but both judges are said to have played a role in the persecution and killing of opponents of the Islamic regime throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
In a statement to state news agency IRNA, the judiciary’s media office described the attack as premeditated assassination.
It also said that, according to initial findings, the attacker had not been involved in any case considered by the supreme court, and an investigation had been launched to identify and arrest any further people who may have been involved in the attack.
The judiciary’s spokesman, Asghar Jahangir, told Iranian state TV that the attacker had entered the court carrying a handgun before opening fire.
One of the judges, Razini, had survived an assassination attempt in 1998 that shook Iran at that time. He was one of the most senior judges in Iran.
The other, Moghiseh, was sanctioned by the US in 2019, with the treasury department accusing him of having “overseen countless unfair trials, during which charges went unsubstantiated and evidence was disregarded”.
At that time, he was a judge in the Tehran Revolutionary Court. He was reportedly named to the supreme court in 2020.
Moghiseh was also among seven Iranian judges sanctioned by Canada in 2023 for what the country described as “their role in gross and systematic human rights violations”.